


and in sadness you paused

by meritmut



Series: i loved you well, when we were young [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Navel-Gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long ago, Loki gave Sif a gift; a trinket, nothing more. Yet tonight, with his passing, it must take the place of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. to be invisible

A comb of silver holds the dark waves of her hair back from her face tonight; Sif stands before her mirror in a gleaming white gown and wonders how best to be invisible.

She studies her reflection closely. She’s pale, but she can pass it off as stress; she’s not hungry, but she can mask it easily enough and only nibble at the minni. Smiling takes conscious effort, but no one will be looking at her tonight.

She can’t mask the shadows beneath her eyes, though, and after careful consideration she decides that the white of the dress highlights the darkness a little too much: she unpins the brooches at her shoulders and the silk pools at her feet in cool ripples as she crosses the room to peer through her closet’s disorganised interior. Her handmaiden had laid the white out for her, maybe hoping Sif would approve of it for the things the colour signifies—a new start, cleansing, moving on from the events that’ve shaken the realm so recently. But no. When she looks at the gown she sees only the bone-white of the Midgardian sun as she fought down the Destroyer, the flash of light that split Asgard’s own sky when the bifröst collapsed. She sees only the whites of Thor’s eyes when he’d come to her that night with a father restored and a brother lost.

She hadn’t hesitated, not as she does now. She’d let her prince rest his head in the hollow of her shoulder and grip the back of her tunic with his shaking fists, and she’d hugged him until the trembles stopped.

They’re all still processing what had happened on the bifröst and down in the desert: how their friend and brother had undergone a transformation that no one had foreseen or even _noticed_ , until it was far too late to avert the disaster that had come and gone, and taken him with it. Thor is desperate, questioning his mother constantly, but Frigg knows only grief that she too had missed the subtler signs and seen only Loki’s sorrow.

Sorrow. The thing that haunts them all without exception or mercy. It lives in the corners of her room, it hides in the vaulted arches and curving halls of the citadel…it breathes down all their necks like a cold draught and yet tonight they will, to a man, put it aside and celebrate rather than mourn the life that has been lost.

The one-day king was a princeling once and many remember him that way still: they remember that though Loki was not so merry as his brother he could make them laugh, and loved it when they did. They remember him as a boy who loved to tease, ignoring that it was usually in response to the needling of others, but more importantly adored his brother. No matter what pranks he pulled, no matter how many foul barbs his tongue unleashed on them, there was never any real doubt that Loki loved no one so well as he loved Thor.

But the majority of the Æsir are unaware of the past week’s events. They don’t know the things of which Loki has—had—proven himself capable: they don’t know that he would’ve taken Thor’s life down on Midgard, that his desperation to prove himself ‘worthy’ of his noble name (and not even his name, in the end; Thor had revealed that in a moment of heartbreaking honesty) had led to attempted fratricide and the destruction of a small settlement on another world.

In fact, very few know the truth of what happened at all, and Sif suspects the queen would keep it that way. The royal family know; the warriors know. No one else needs to. Not yet, at least.

A long-sleeved gown of heavy, dark-green velvet falls under her seeking fingers and for a moment her fist clenches around the fabric and Sif closes her eyes against a flash of pain. She needs something with weight to it to keep her anchored to the earth tonight, but she can't wear green. Not that shade—not tonight.

The silver comb slips a little and she fixes it back into place without thinking. Before, she might’ve worn her hair free and trusted in him to run his fingers through it, push it back behind her ear with a strange smile and some remark about how it’s an unnecessary risk—for her to garb herself in toughened leather and steel yet leave her hair swinging free. A risk he wouldn’t countenance, though a change to her habit has—had—never been his to enforce. She’d told him so when they were young, and he'd brought her a gift of a golden comb made by his mother’s own smith. Her hair, her choice; and her choice was a matter of pride.

If her foes see her unafraid of leaving such an opening in her defences, she’d reasoned to him on another occasion when the topic had been broached again, then they’ll think twice about taking her on.

They’ll know she is no weakling, that her skill is the match of her courage.

Or they’ll think her a damned fool for gambling with her own safety in such an avoidable way, Loki had pointed out with no little exasperation. A hair-fine line divides confidence and arrogance, though he had never been mad enough to call Sif arrogant outright. Let him hint, and hope she would get the point and learn to take her wellbeing more seriously. No skalds would sing of the girl whose hair got her killed, after all, except for as a cautionary tale.

Sif had rolled her eyes at that and promised that if the way she wore her hair got her killed, he could tell her “I told you so” each morning for the rest of his life. He hadn’t found the comment as amusing as she’d hoped.

(But he'd never managed to catch her that way when they sparred, either.)

Now…now neither hints nor soothing hands greet her frustration and she groans aloud, pressing the heels of her palms into her eye sockets as if to compress her own skull and drive her inarticulate grief out—force it out into the air where it won’t fester in her lungs and scorch her words at their very roots.

It’s irritating, she realises. Pushing her own hair back, it spills between her fingers and she wants nothing more than to braid it. But to plait it, coil it onto her head and get it out of the way…it would be like giving in, acknowledging that he’d been right. She needs her shields now more than ever and she won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her with her hair bound and tamed. She’ll meet his memory halfway with the gift he'd given her last Jóltide, a rippling silver comb decorated with a curving design that might, if one looks at it the right way, resemble one of Loki’s own slender daggers. They were always peculiarly-shaped—weapons of vanity more than practicality, though always perfectly-balanced and inestimably deadly. She has one of them in her possession, has had it for ages and never bothered to return it to him. Too late now.

 _Fool. Fool. Thrice-damned fool._ In her head she curses him with every expletive she can think of, rips the comb from her hair with a savage snarl and hurls it at the bed—it bounces, lands on the floor and Sif flies across the room to retrieve it, curling her hands about its delicate weight as she checks for damage with an urgency bordering on madness.

Never in her life has she felt this way before: felt so utterly and completely adrift. She hates it, and still she clings to her loss as if without it she’d suffocate. She’s being selfish, indulging her own sentiments beyond the norm, but until she can find herself a distraction she doesn’t know what else to do. Maybe at the feast her mind might wander, settle elsewhere and let her be at peace.

Maybe. For the moment, her skull runs over with Loki and the lack of him, and she wishes she could peel back her skin and bone and scrape him out by the fistful. If this goes on, she won’t remember the times she came close to loving him. She’ll only remember the ache he causes her now, the utter devastation he’s wreaked in his family—who aren’t so proficient at masking their sorrows as they like to think—and she’ll hate him.

She already does, she realises, running her finger along the comb and enclosing it in her fist. The walls are closer than she remembers, the shadows untouched by candlelight reaching taller and darker than shadows rightly should. Her chamber, once a sanctuary filled with her favourite memories, has become a tomb; her bed, once warm with the imprint of their years together, a casket of charred notes and forlorn favours. As she steps into the silken length of a silver gown, woven in the manner of mail and sheathing her skin like a gauntlet, she tugs it up over her hips and decides, with nary a work spoken, that she is done with him and will cut the cord that binds them at the earliest opportunity.

But for tonight, out of respect, she slides the comb into her hair and summons her composure like a shield to bear through battle.


	2. you take me back to when

“I’m not sure…”

Loki rolls his eyes, crosses his arms and raises an impatient eyebrow at her. “What’s the matter with it?”

“It’s impractical,” Sif points out, poking at it disapprovingly and earning herself a snort.

“If you insist on wearing your hair like a horse’s tail, you ought to be well-versed in impracticality by now.”

Sif turns to him and skewers him with a mocking scowl. She tugs the offending object out of her hair and returns it to him, drawing the tumble of dark silk back into a leather band even as she tells him, for the hundredth time, “it keeps it out of my face when I fight.”

“It’s a _risk_. Anyone could grab hold of it—and then you’d be dead. No question.” Loki pushes that thought away before it can sink its claws into him. It’s a worst-case scenario, the darkest possible outcome of every day that Sif rides off to war. He knows she’s strong, skilled, ferocious. He doesn’t question her _skill_ in the least—but here, in the quiet, when it's just the two of them? Here if nowhere else, he is free to question her good sense.

Not that she takes it that way. She interprets his anxiety as doubt, and responds as if challenged. “What makes you think I’d let them get that close?”

Loki sighs. “You can’t be looking everywhere, all the time.” He reaches up, catches the _horse’s tail_ of her sleek, soft hair with his fingers and lifts it over her shoulder. Unconsciously she shifts, rolling her shoulders slightly so that his cool hand brushes her neck. He lets it settle there, running his thumb across the smooth skin below her ear until she shivers.

“No,” Sif agrees, her tone no less sharp for the softness she permits of him. “Of course. I’m not you, with eyes in the back of my head.” Folding her arms, she gazes him down, refuses to move any closer. Always a game with her; always a contest of control and wills. But he’ll win—he can see it in her eyes. She craves him, having missed him for days.

It’s not as if he feels any differently towards her, though. He’s spent the past few days with his mother’s goldsmith, scrutinising every step of the process that created the gift he's brought for Sif. He itches to tighten his grip now, bring her close to him and make her sigh against his mouth.

“I can’t be looking everywhere either,” he implores her with his eyes to see reason, to understand that he’s just—looking out for her. _Caring._ That it's not an affront to her valour. “Or else you’d have nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t need protecting.”

“You don’t need _defending._ There’s a difference. I _know_ you are perfectly capable of defending yourself, but—need I remind you—there isn’t a single member of my brother’s little tribe who doesn't owe their life to another?" His voice softens. "It’s no mark against your honour, Sif. We protect each other, don’t we?”

“Always.” She looks insulted at the very notion that it might be otherwise.

“Well, this is me, protecting you the best way I can. It _is_ a mark against your intellect to walk into a battle with a gaping weakness in your armour. At least—braid it and pin it up, or something.”

“Is this you telling me what to do?” The corner of her mouth twitches up a little—she takes a step toward him and Loki mirrors her, drawn close by the fire in her eyes and the way her lips shape a challenge from a smile.

“It’s a suggestion. I can do no more, and I wouldn’t try.”

“You’re just worrying about me,” she tilts her head to one side.

“I find I can't help myself.”

“Well, try.” She plucks the golden hair comb from his hand and turns it over in her hands again, running a finger along the serpent engraved in the curving body. “It is quite beautiful.”

“I’m a firm believer that possessions should reflect their owners.”

“You’re a snake, you mean,” laughing lightly, Sif twines her arms about his neck and he bends to kiss her at last, tasting a kind of tender gratitude on her mouth. Gratitude—and sweet, deadly promise.

His gifts, however clumsily-given, do not go unrewarded.

“Will you wear it tonight?” he asks, trying to imagine what she’ll look like in one of her lovely gowns, the comb pinning one side of her hair back, as she takes her seat on Thor’s right hand and attempts to keep her countenance when she explains whence came the pretty trinket. Loki smirks at the thought of her flushing at the memories he'll give her, the things he longs to do to her between then and now to mark her as _his_ the way he is hers, and he knows she can see his desires in his eyes.

“Oh, shut it,” she snaps, and yanks him down to claim him in a kiss again.


	3. what wickedness your mouth

She wears it like a noose. It sits in her hair and displays her fine features for the admiration of the one who is not there to see them, whose absence is more marked for the rest of the court than his presence ever was. Sif doesn’t mind that, though the injustice of it still rankles with her. She doesn’t mind, because with everyone’s focus on the fallen prince—or the lack of him—she and her friends might slip by unnoticed. Ignored, unless they choose otherwise.

Some of them do. Volstagg and Fandral, both of them three sheets to the wind and aiming for a fourth, regale the high table with their tales of their lost brother-in-arms with such determination that she knows they seek to lift the gloom and rouse the gathering to raucous reminiscences as befits a funeral feast. After all, the Æsir only know that their prince Loki is gone from them: they know not the complete circumstances and so it's only natural, only tradition, to feast his memory.

Sif, for her part, can barely muster the energy to breathe.

Absently her hand lifts to brush across the cold silver of the comb, as familiar beneath her seeking fingertips as one of the blades she would steal from him in a game as old as their friendship. She remembers the day she'd let him slide it into her hair and she, with an unexpected surge of affection for him and his trinkets, had wound her arms around his neck and stepped close as his own arms fell about her waist and for once she hadn’t minded that they were exposed to the whole realm (or so it seemed, so high up were they on the terrace of Loki's rooms where anyone might glance across from one of the other towers and catch them); that she was hardly inconspicuous in a gown so white it seemed to shine like ice under starlight. She was content—more than content—to simply hold her lover in her arms and care nothing for whoever might look up to see the prince and the Einherji, gilt gold and happy in the fading glow of the midwinter solstice.

It had been another feast and another world, that afternoon. She had tasted frost in the air sweet and sharp, felt its echo on Loki's mouth and beneath her own skin as his clever fingers sought the brooches at her shoulders and plucked them free. Her gown, with its artfully-draped sleeves that left her upper arms bare and the beautiful woven girdle of beaten silver thread, had tumbled to the floor and a gasp had escaped her as the chilly air slipped between her body and the warmth the dress had provided. Loki's hands had fallen to her hips once more and drawn her close against him, his want and affection evident in every line of him, and Sif had felt a new heat stir deep within her in answer.

“Anyone could look up…” she'd murmured, running her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and noting with no small satisfaction the way his breath stuttered, his eyes blown-black and ready to devour.

“Let them look.” His voice swept over her, rough as the stone of the column at her back and warm as the sun itself on her shoulders when he lifted her into his arms and kissed her, hard and possessive and she met him with matching hunger, the taste of him on her tongue and the pressure of him between her thighs striking like flint low in her belly and sending heat racing across her skin. She's noticed this over the years, a curious pattern to Loki's behaviour: she knew the rapture in his eyes and the fierceness of his attempts to consume her had absolutely everything to do with the gown she had until a few moments ago worn. He, accustomed as he was her faded leathers and polished plate, would react to the (admittedly rare) sight of her in more delicate attire with the kind of starved _need_ that sometimes, Sif decided, her self-esteem very much appreciated. Anything particularly thin or diaphanous and she'd often catch his eyes wandering, drawn helplessly by the sway of her skirts to the line of her silhouette, and staying there until he'd feel her own gaze boring into him and invariably blush crimson as his brother’s cloak.

Tonight, alone with her and the lovely snow-white gown with its tantalising shoulder-brooches (oh, how he loved those brooches; how easy they made it to strip her of everything and lay her bare to his worshipping gaze), he was not so bashful, his hands skimming over her as though he could never tire of touching her, as though there could never be enough of her to sate him, bright eyes and golden skin and whimpers torn from her throat like red fruits from the vine that he swallows down, could get drunk on the sound of her, _wants_ to, he could eat and drink nothing but Sif and Valhalla would never compare to her—she caught him with her gaze and held him there, thighs clenched about his waist and her hair spilling over her shoulders and the temptation of those dark curls could not be met—he made a fist in the softness of it, tugging her head back to expose her throat to his teeth and she bared her own at the pain that thrilled through her from his hands and his mouth but her hips drove against his and—

They both froze at the unmistakable sound of bone cracking, as Sif felt the comb pinning her hair up splinter beneath the pressure of his grip.

Loki drew back, the ornament coming away in his hands cleanly split in two. _Just as well I have a new one, then._

“Ah,” he muttered apologetically, “sorry.”

Sif ran her hands through her hair and shook it out impatiently, his new gift to her falling into her open palm as she did so. “No matter. Put it down.”

Loki frowned. “I can...fix it?”

The look she speared him with told him not to be so obtuse, as she plucked the comb from his fingers herself and tossed it aside.

She tightened her legs about his hips again and met his raised eyebrow with a smirk. “I have a better use for your hands."

And what had happened next, well—Sif freely admits that she’d brought it on herself. If her back had been scraped against the pillar and her collarbones had borne bruises that her dress only just concealed, if she'd cried out so loudly she’s sure they couldn’t have gone unheard…really, none of that was enough to make her regret a second of it. She clings to the memory now, walking through the halls towards the minni where, yes, recollections of Loki will be shared but no, this particular one won’t be among them. This one, as with so many of the others she keeps close inside her, belonged to the two of them, and now to her alone.

He'd driven her against the column so hard the breath skipped her lungs and scorched her throat on its way to meet his kiss, tender and consuming all at once and she reciprocated readily—her hands slipped beneath his collar and her fingernails dug crescents into his shoulder muscles as she took his lower lip between her teeth in the way that drove him wild, made him hers body and mind and stuttering, electrified heartbeat. It was her way of staking her claim on him, of marking him as hers and no one else’s and all the whole he did the same, his teeth flashing across the soft skin of her shoulder until her gasping remonstrations that _he’d better not leave a mark where people could see_ made him laugh low and light and easy and leave gentle kisses instead, dipping to trail his lips across the tips of her breasts and then once more up the line of her neck, home to her mouth to rest his forehead against hers and whisper something she didn’t quite catch, yet knew without hearing, knew without knowing, and repeated to him without saying a word.

“We’ve time yet,” she'd murmured, kissing him again just for the pleasure of it, “time enough.”

She had taken him by the hand and led him inside to the bed she’d shared with him for so many nights, uncaring that the white gown lay outside on the terrace and her discarded veil was fluttering away in the winter wind for she’d nothing to keep it in place now, such fleeting considerations driven from her mind with dizzying purpose until Loki was the only thing in her head, devouring even as she cried out and clung to him, rocked her hips into his own to make him groan and take his revenge with a sudden thrust—and how she’d whimpered then, when he slumped across her and she wondered if they would be missed, if anyone would _really_ notice their prince’s absence.

Well, they notice it now, she reflects as she takes her place on the high table. It fills every seat and makes the rafters ring with songs and tales, and it digs hard and unforgiving into her scalp in the form of a curving silver hair comb.

He had knelt upon the bed while she dressed and wondered how best to affix her veil back into place, and held out this glimmering object for her to take back. She hadn’t realised he’d reclaimed it from her earlier.

A gift, Loki had shrugged. He hadn’t _intended_ to break the bone one but it was fortunate she had this one to replace it now. Did she approve? Or was it another impracticality, like the gold one he’d commissioned for her centuries ago?

She was not the green novice she’d been then, Sif had pointed out with mock offence. She had earned the right, now, to wear her hair how she chose.

And besides, if her hair should bother her...was he not always there to brush it out of the way for her?

Many a time Loki’s silver tongue had been his downfall, a traitorous gift and curse he could wield like a whip and work such wicked trouble and mischief she wondered that no one had cut it out yet. Sif is not so used to her mouth betraying her, but now she recalls her careless comment and wonders if she’d tempted fate—invited doom down upon them with her unthinking teasing.

_Was there a way? Had there ever been a way?_

Volstagg recounts a jest; Fandral sings. Sif laughs, and the comb is just a comb.


	4. we may lose ourselves

Loki had never intended for Sif to discover the charms that, long ago, he’d placed upon her favourite comb. They were hidden well, concealed so cleverly that she had never even suspected the trinket had been tampered with—because it hadn't. The charms were in its making. Loki had stood guard over its creation, and worked his spells into the gold until they were inextricable, undetectable, all but invisible.

He had never intended a lot of things, she knows now, but the day has come, as all days must in the end.

She had risen with the sun, waking from a strange sleep coloured with dark and restless dreams of a turbulent cosmos, a storm-tossed sea of stars beyond Asgard’s own. Now she dresses for a day of little activity (she would stay in bed till midday if she could, but she knows she is needed and she would not abandon Thor now) and crosses the room on somnambulant feet to the small table beneath her mirror that serves as a rudimentary vanity. It contains no paints nor pots save a few balms and ointments, a small chest containing the lavender-scented bandages she makes herself and puts aside to soothe burns, and a smaller box that contains her jewels. She flips back the lid, scarcely aware of what she does, and rummages until her fingers scrape across gold.

In a twist of circumstance that she thinks she might never forgive herself for, it’s not the spells themselves Sif observes but rather the lack of them. It’s the hollow feeling of the comb as it rests in her palms (a feeling that slowly leeches through her until she wonders that her weightless bones can still hold her upright at all) that brings the awareness, in the fullness of its own inevitability, of what has been lost. How ironic, she thinks as her fingers curl around the chilly gold, that the day she learns of the wards keeping watch over her safety should be the day after those enchantments die.

Ironic, and yet perfectly fitting. No one would ever claim that Loki made things easy for those around him, nor that Sif would have wanted him to. The surest and truest sign that his love for her had endured till the end lay simply in the fact that his protection had to: the thing she insisted she never needed, because he was there and wasn't he enough? And she had never thought to wonder why this silly trinket—this _hair comb_ , a maiden’s gift from a maiden’s companion, should be so dear to her. Never once, until now when the truth is beyond obvious, had she questioned why she might value a pretty artifice almost as highly as she does her shield.

Her shield…

How swift fly her feet as she moves across the room to snatch up her shield and run a frantic hand across its convex surface, glimmering faintly in the morning light. First she only traces her fingertips—hoping, praying that it will respond as it has done every day for years, magic singing through it and into her until they are one—but with increasing desperation she lays her palm flat upon it, then slides her arm into the braces, and finally casts it from her with a cry.

In the past it seemed to hum beneath her touch as if answering the call of her blood, but under her hands now the thing is silent. Whatever magics bound it are gone, voiceless as if they’d never been there at all.

Had they ever been? Had it been in her mind, some romantic notion that he might be looking out for her despite her own protestations, embodying itself in her imagination?

She does not know if it is so, and the only certain thing is that she never will.

Slowly she bends to pick the shield up from the floor again, and brushes it softly as if in apology. Whether by Loki’s grace or not it has served her well and deserves better than to be cast from her side and forgotten. It deserves, as a mark of remembrance for the fallen if nothing else, a place of honour.

It sits above her bed, hanging on the wall where another warrior might keep the head of a prize stag she’d felled, and when Sif thinks of it or looks at it in days to come (when she wakes, when she dresses, when she first brings home the glittering new shield of silver steel and when she disrobes for bed that night) it is with memory and with sadness.

Loki had sent death on her trail and accepted slaughter as the price for his one-day crown of lead, but in the end it was a different payment altogether that the fates had claimed.

_How can I demand settlement for a blood-debt from one who has nothing left to pay?_

Settlement—or revenge? she wonders idly, as the chill begins to recede from her fingertips. It lingers in her heart with a weight like stone and even in grief she knows herself well enough to know the truth without doubt: that vengeance is the furthest thought of all from her mind, and that there is nothing she wouldn’t pay to make it otherwise.


End file.
